This week, China marks the arrival of the Year of the Tiger, a sign of bravery, power and energy. It is typically a lunar year of swings in fortune – although the tiger is bold, fearless and determined to secure the top slot, it can be impulsive and risky.

If the past six months are anything to go by, China could indeed be on track for a robust year. The country catapulted up the equity capital markets league tables in the second half of last year as enterprises sought fresh capital amid bullish investor sentiment.

European and US investment banks which sought opportunity in the east were not disappointed: nine of the world’s biggest initial public offerings in terms of capital raised originated in China, including the $7.3bn (€5.3bn) China State Construction Engineering Corporation issue, which was the second largest globally after Banco Santander Brasil raised $7.5bn in October on the NYSE and São Paolo Stock Exchange.

China’s and Hong Kong’s bourses led a global IPO recovery, an impressive feat for the former given the lack of activity in the first half of the year as Beijing imposed a moratorium on fundraising in a bid to control liquidity.

By the end of the year, greater China had overtaken the US in the sum raised from listings with more than $52bn raised in the people’s republic and Hong Kong, according to data from Dealogic. Hong Kong took the top position for equity capital-raising for the first time globally.

Financials, conglomerates, engineering and casinos topped the list of big names tapping the capital markets in both greater China and internationally, while mergers and acquisitions activity tended to be focused on natural resources.

According to Farhan Faruqui, head of global banking for Citigroup in Asia Pacific, these trends are set to continue this year. He said: “You are already seeing the themes in some of the transactions that are currently in the market – active capital markets issuance on the back of strong liquidity and M&A around the resource space. We sense from the conversations we are having with clients now that this will be the year of renewed outbound M&A from Asia.”

He said confidence and liquidity were ample to support transactions. “Asia’s growing breed of global champions that blazed a trail a few years back showed those with similar aspirations what was possible. We would expect to see more headline outbound M&A transactions from China in the year ahead.”

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This sentiment is echoed by Rui Nie, head of China equity capital markets at HSBC. “I think there’s a good chance we are going to exceed the capital raising levels of last year,” he said. “A lot of companies are taking the opportunity of market conditions to raise finance, particularly Chinese companies in need of capital to grow or upgrade their business.”

Raymond Yin, managing director and co-head of China investment banking at Royal Bank of Scotland, said Europe and the US last year saw mainly recapitalisations in the financial institutions group sector, with many jumbo rights issues, whereas deals in China were mainly new issuance and new money.

The year ahead will continue to be strong in China. Yin said: “As a rough estimate, there are over 50 Chinese companies actively pursuing overseas listing opportunities, of which about 70% to 80 % are considering a Hong Kong listing, while some 20% to 30 % of the companies are looking at listing elsewhere, primarily on Nasdaq and NYSE.” These companies are mainly in the consumer, energy and resources, manufacturing, and technology sectors.

M&A activity last year tended to be large state-owned enterprises looking at overseas acquisitions of distressed assets at good prices, particularly in the energy and resources sector.

In the foreign investment banking community, a glut of deals in the latter part of last year presented challenges as increased demand put pressure on a smaller workforce.

Banks that were fast to curb numbers during troubled times scrambled to get people in place to cope with the workload, according to Rui. “It’s a very small pool of skilled people, so there has been a game of musical chairs,” he said.

At the same time, ambitious and aggressive domestic players such as Bank of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China have been setting their sights on foreign-trained bankers who could help boost their international presence. Rui said: “We are seeing a very aggressive expansion of the local houses … and a lot of competition we didn’t encounter before. The local Chinese banks are aggressively leveraging their balance sheet to expand their investment banking business in Hong Kong.”

These banks have been hiring staff from foreign peers – particularly middle and junior employees. It has led to a situation where the local banks, typically excelling in domestic securities and A-share deals, are becoming more involved in cross-border activity, albeit on a small scale.

However, Philip Partnow, deputy head of investment banking at UBS Securities in Beijing, said that although domestic players had upped their game, they remained a long way from securing the top cross-border mandates.